31 December 2008

The Chase on the Lake is a premier hotel, restored to the elegance it displayed when it was first built in 1922, when revelers used to ride the railroad train up from Mpls-St. Paul to spend holidays at Leech Lake.

This year they are offering a New Year's Eve package which includes lobster/chateaubriand dinner, drinks, dancing, and... the rental of a fish house?

The album title is E=MC2 (with the 2 superscripted as in the famous mass/energy equation). This is supposed to stand for "Mariah Carey times two," but as written the 2 applies only to the C, so it "translates" as Mariah Carey Carey.

It should have been written E = 2(MC).

Not to be out-geeked, someone else has pointed out that the equation actually should be written as follows:

E^2= (m^2)(c^4) + (p^2)(c^2)

because it only simplifies to E=MC^2 for particles with no motion. You learn something every day.

...using the Internet Movie Cars Database, the link to which was posted at Presurfer today. The nice part is that it lists not just fancy cars that are prominent in the movie (which would never include mine), but also incidental cars parked on the sides of streets. I found my original yellow Beetle in Sahara, my treasured Z-car in Good Burger, and my 160,000 workhorse green Subaru in Inspector Gadget. Yours will be somewhere in the database.

Update May 2010: The Forester now has 175,000 miles and is still going strong.

30 December 2008

As a reader who prefers nonfiction, I had not encountered Margaret Atwood's writings until an article in ?Harpers or ?The Atlantic praised this one, so I gave it a try, and decided it's worth reviewing.

At 500+ pages the book is a bit long and likely could have been compressed a bit; there are some passages that to my ear sound awkward:

The storm was gone by nightfall, but it was still dank as a drain. I roiled around in the muddle of my bed, listening to my heart limping against the bedsprings, trying to get comfortable. (p. 135)

A "limping heart" as one "roils around" in the "muddle of a bed" seems like the effort of a young writer trying to be artistic. Such passages, however, are few, and are overbalanced by an abundance of nicely phrased (and deeply-thought) pieces. Here is an elderly woman musing over her wedding photos:

I and the girl in the picture have ceased to be the same person. I am her outcome, the result of the life she once lived headlong; whereas she, if she can be said to exist at all, is composed only of what I remember. I have the better view – I can see her clearly, most of the time. But even if she knew enough to look, she can’t see me at all. (p. 239)

Here she contemplates the development of a major tragedy:

Breakfasts, picnics, ocean voyages, costume balls, newspapers, boating on the river. Such items do not assort very well with tragedy. But in life, a tragedy is not one long scream. It includes everything that led up to it. Hour after trivial hour, day after day, year after year, and then the sudden moment: the knife stab, the shell-burst, the plummet of the car from the bridge.” (p. 417)

And some final thoughts as death draws near:

At my age you indulge in these apocalyptic visions. You say, The end of the world is at hand. You lie to yourself – I’m glad I won’t be around to see it – when in fact you’d like nothing better, as long as you can watch it through the little secret window, as long as you won’t be involved. (p. 478)

And one final witty observation:

Aimee looked like any newborn baby – she had that squashed face, as if she’d hit a wall at high speed. (p. 431)

The novel itself has several story lines intertwined into a complex but ultimately coherent plot with a surprising and satisfying outcome. It was published in 2000 and won the coveted Booker Prize that year. Time magazine lists it among the 100 greatest English-language novels since 1923. If you enjoy reading (long) novels, it will reward your time.

The singular term "sweet tooth" is a phrase that everyone knows, referring to a liking or preference for sweet foods or candies.

While reading The Blind Assassin, I encountered this sentence:

“Young girls have such sweet tooths.” (p. 234)

The knee-jerk response is that it must be wrong, that it should read "sweet teeth," but then the latter sounds equally awkward.

The "sweet tooth" is either a single item in one's mouth, or a condition or perception in one's senses, so one person can't have plural "sweet teeth," which conveys the wrong implication that the teeth themselves are sweet. To my ear, "sweet tooths" does in fact sound more appropriate.

But "tooths" is not offered as a plural of "tooth" in Random House or in the OED. (Though, curiously, "teeths" can sometimes be used).

Perhaps there's a copy editor out there somewhere with a reference book of usage that can clarify this matter...

Having an elderly parent with suboptimal short-term memory probably sensitizes me to such things, but over the past year or two I notice friends and acquaintances commenting offhandedly re their lapses of memory ("senior moments" according to some, or "CRAFT* moments" according to others).

Last week I received an email in which a friend commented "... my dad is getting forgetful, B----- is getting forgetful, J---E---- is getting forgetful... Bums me out." This afternoon I was walking downtown with a young friend who suddenly couldn't remember the (common) word he wanted to use in conversation.

It almost makes one wonder if the fast pace of our cyberworld lives keeps introducing so many facts/stories/videos/tunes into our brains that the cerebrum winds up having to zap its parameter RAM and reboot, and in the process loses a few "inconsequential" data bits. Or perhaps there's something in the air...

That dose of Prozac, Effexor, Wellbutrin, Zoloft or Zyban doesn't disappear once you swallow it.

Some of it flows through your body into toilets, sewer lines, wastewater treatment plants and eventually into lakes and rivers.

Multiply that by millions of people, and tons of diluted but biologically active drug residues end up in the drink...

Scientists at St. Cloud State University [are] studying what happens to fathead minnows when they're exposed to antidepressants. The results have been surprising.

They've found that fish eggs and hatchlings doused with drugs are more laid back than those raised in cleaner water. That may be a death sentence in nature; they could be gobbled up by larger fish before they can escape...

...those exposed to antidepressants for five days as eggs or during 12 days after hatching were almost twice as slow to react as those raised in clean water. "If you're a fish living downstream of a wastewater treatment plant, you're not just getting a single dose of Prozac, you're getting several antidepressants, antibiotics, estrogen, birth control pills and other compounds...."

Some of his other research has shown that males exposed to some antidepressants were "feminized" and developed proteins normally made only by egg-laying females.

What all of this means is unclear, said Schoenfuss, except that pharmaceuticals even at extremely low concentrations can affect growth and development of very young and adult fish.

Old news from 2004, but worth repeating as a reference base for those who think they are "tough guys."

Alone in her one-room cabin high in the mountains of southern Mexico, Ines Ramirez Perez felt the pounding pains of a child insistent on entering the world...

Three years earlier, she had given birth to a dead baby girl. As her labour intensified, so did her concern for this unborn child.

The sun had set hours ago. The nearest clinic was 80km away over rough roads, and her husband, her only assistant during a half-dozen previous births, was drinking at a cantina. She had no phone and neither did the cantina.

So at midnight, after 12 hours of constant pain, the petite, 40-year-old mother of six sat down on a low wooden bench. She took several gulps from a bottle of rubbing alcohol, grabbed a 15-cm knife and began to cut.

That was March 5, 2000. Today the baby she delivered, Orlando Ruiz Ramirez, is a rambunctious 4-year-old. And Ines Ramirez is recognised internationally as a modern miracle: She is believed to be the only woman known to have performed a successful Caesarean-section on herself.

Teaching Math In 1950:A logger sold a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is 4/5 of the price. What is his profit?

Teaching Math In 1960:A logger sold a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is 4/5 of the price, or $80. What is his profit?

Teaching Math In 1970:A logger sold a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is $80. Did he make a profit?

Teaching Math In 1980:A logger sold a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is $80 and his profit is $20. Your assignment: Underline the number 20.

Teaching Math In 1990:A logger cut down a beautiful forest, because he is selfish and inconsiderate and cares nothing for the habitat of animals or the preservation of our woodlands. He does this so he can make a profit of $20. What do you think of this way of making a living? After answering the question, the topic for class participation is: How did the birds and squirrels feel as the logger cut down their homes? (There are no wrong answers.)

The Result In 2005:Last week I purchased a burger at Burger King for $1.58. The young woman at the counter took my $2. I was digging for my change when I pulled 8 cents from my pocket and gave it to her. She stood there, holding the nickel and 3 pennies while looking at the screen on her register.

I sensed her discomfort and tried to tell her to just give me two quarters, but she hailed the manager for help. While he tried to explain the transaction to her, she stood there and cried.

28 December 2008

What to do with calendars at the end of the year? One suggestion is to recycle the pictures into colorful envelopes. I would suggest not using these for postal mailings, since patterned envelopes may impair computerized reading of addresses and ZIPs, but they would look nice on gifts.

A girl in India has set a new record as the youngest person ever to pass the exam as a Microsoft Certified Professional. She is 9 years old.

During the riots in Greece, one of the "anarchist agitators" smashing windows etc. was filmed mingling freely with the police. The narration of the YouTube video is in Greek, but the guy does appear to be acting like an agent provocateur.

A long article in the WSJ details how Iceland succumbed to financial trends and became a prime victim (and a prime propagator) of the worldwide financial meltdown.

Presurfer has a link to a good article on How To Avoid Looking Like An American Tourist. Lots of commonsense and ordinary recommendations, but also some one might not think of. I didn't know holding one's fork in the right hand makes Americans obvious in restaurants.

There was a swarm of sixteen earthquakes in 24 hours this weekend (map above, updates at this link). It probably is not significant, but it is worth remembering that the Yellowstone caldera is a hotspot above a supervolcano, the eruption of which would mean theendoflifeasweknowit, at least for the United States. The Yellowstone one has erupted approximately every 600,000 years, and the last eruption was... lets see... 600,000 years ago.

Ice festivals and winter carnivals are common celebrations in northern countries; where I grew up in Minnesota, the St. Paul Winter Carnival had been an annual event since 1886 (when it was established in response to a New York reporter's claim that the area was "another Siberia, unfit for human habitation." The bottom photo above shows the Ice Palace of 1887.

Among the modern winter festivals, one of the most spectacular is held in Harbin, in the PRC (next door to the real Siberia). I've embedded two photos above. There are impressive collections of photos here and here.

Understanding how the basilisk accomplishes this raises the question as to whether this was the mode of locomotion of the dinosaur ancestors of modern birds. All of the fossils of the primitive Archaeopteryx have been found in what 150 million years ago was an archipelago of coral islands. There is no tree pollen in the deposits that hold the Archaeopteryx fossils, suggesting that they did not glide from trees. Also, they were very small - the size of the basilisk.

Perhaps Archaeopteryx was a shore bird running across shallow waters, and the feathered upper limbs were developed to enhance this performance; after several millennia they could have evolved into proper wings with aerodynamic lift. Anyone who has ever spent time fishing or at a lakeshore or seashore has certainly seen modern seabirds run across the surface before attaining enough velocity to allow liftoff.

This "ground up" hypothesis for the origin of bird flight was apparently first proposed in 2000; other paleontologists and biologists disagree and favor a "trees down" development from gliding to flapping. The argument won't be settled soon - nor need it be. It's just interesting to ponder...

But slipping into St. Patrick's for Mass in Spanish is pretty wonderful. It's like a big family reunion at which I know nobody and so nobody is mad at me. Nothing said in Spanish offends me doctrinally or any other way. I squeeze into the crowd, under the placid stone faces of saints, the sweet smell of burning wax and a hundred varieties of cologne, and feel the religious fervor, and tears come to my eyes, and I light a candle, say a wordless prayer, and out into the cold I go.

It brought back memories of Christmas Eve in Copenhagen 20 years ago and how beautiful the sermons were before I started learning Danish.

A man gets a keener sense of the divine in a church that is not your own. Maybe Luther and Calvin and Jan Hus and all them were dead wrong and literacy is not the key nor an understanding of Scripture, and maybe the essence of Christmas is dumb childlike wonder and the more you think about it, the less you understand.

I've always doubted claims about cellphones and cancer because of the latter should require a long latency, and cell phone use is a recent development. Early results from a large collaborative study are, however, beginning to suggest a trend...

Interphone researchers are pooling and analyzing the results gathered from studies on 6,400 tumors sampled from patients in 13 countries... people who use cellphones regularly are 50 percent more likely than non-users to develop brain tumors. And a joint Interphone analysis from the U.K., Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland reported a 40 percent increase in tumor risk in people who use cellphones for more than a decade; the study found no discernable risk for people who have used cellphones for fewer than 10 years.

Note that's not a study of 6,400 people - it's a study of 6,400 cases of brain cancer, which is a relatively uncommon disorder.

Image credit to Gizmodo - I interpret it as a commentary on where people should store cell phones while driving a car...

"[I] was just thinking my sister does -alot- of reading and spends like $1000 a year on just books alone. most of them she reads once then never looks at again. is there any kind of like… video rental store but for books? would make things alot cheaper, plus once has read one the next person can get enjoyment from it etc"

This is several years old and has been amusing librarians and library users ever since; I thought it is worth sharing.

The difference in stature between white women and black women has now stretched to three-quarters of an inch and appears to be increasing, according to newly released data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) conducted by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The average height of a black woman born in the 1980s is just under 5 feet 4 inches; her mother, born in the 1960s, is more than half an inch taller. Even her grandmother, born in the 1940s, is a bit taller. The average white woman born in the 1980s is about half an inch taller than her mother...

You have to go back to the antebellum South to find a similar shrinkage. The generation of white men born in the 1840s who experienced the ravages of the Civil War lost nearly an inch to their Northern counterparts, Komlos said.

... the average height of adult Americans, once the tallest folk to roam the planet, stopped rising after World War II and has since been surpassed by that of several European nations. The Dutch now lay claim to the title of tallest...

"The only reasonable explanation we can come up with is diet and the obesity epidemic among (middle- and low-income) black women," said Komlos.

Over the last three decades, the prevalence of obesity among white Americans has tripled, while among blacks it has increased fivefold....

High caloric intake... speeds the onset of puberty... This early onset of puberty reduces the duration of the critical pre-adolescent growth spurt, resulting in a lower adult height.

More at the link. Image credit here (the women in the image were not part of the study and I don't know if they are shorter than expected; it's just a random picture of a group of African-American women).

NEWTON COUNTY, Ga. -- The latest case of zero-tolerance at the public schools has a 10-year-old student sadder and wiser, and facing expulsion and long-term juvenile detention... Alandis' gun was a "cap gun," a toy cowboy six-shooter that his mother bought for him...

"We got it from Wal-Mart... That's what he wanted because it was just like the ones he was studying for the Civil War" in his fifth-grade class at Fairview Elementary School...

"On the school bus... when I dug into my bookbag trying to get my phone out, the boy beside me, he reached in my bookbag and got it [the toy gun] and started telling everybody, 'He's got a gun, he's got a gun,' and spread it around the whole bus. So I put it back in my bookbag."

The story continues at the link, with a neighborhood child calling the police to say that the boy had a real gun. Six police officers arrived at his home, booked him, and fingerprinted him.

"Student safety is our primary concern, and although this was a toy gun, it is still a very serious offense and it is a violation of school rules. We will not tolerate weapons of any kind on school property."

I do understand the danger that toy guns can be mistaken for real ones. But it's not right to charge him with "possessing a weapon." A toy gun is not a weapon. Something doesn't become a weapon because it looks like one. I'm reminded of the Canadian woman who had a two-inch gun charm on a necklace and was hassled by the TSA for that.

The boy needed to be educated and gently disciplined. "You shouldn't have done that. Don't do it again." He didn't need to be "booked and fingerprinted." Zero-tolerance policies in schools require no brains to administer, as when that 13-year-old girl was strip-searched for ibuprofen (later ruled by U.S. Court of Appeals to be unconstitutional).

Embedded above are the pages showing microscope sets ($5 - $15), chemistry sets with lots of toxic materials ($5 - $28), and a Lionel train for $40. I wonder what the latter would go for now on eBay new-in-box. Would have been a better investment than General Motors stock...

26 December 2008

I took a picture of Hong Kong from this same vantage point about 25 years ago; there were not nearly as many buildings then, nor were they as high. The above image enlarges to fullscreen, but the original image at Wiki is a much more impressive panorama.

The display of caganers has been a tradition in Catalonia since the 17th century:

Accompanying Mary, Joseph, Jesus, the Shepherds and company, the caganer is often tucked away in a corner of the model, typically nowhere near the manger scene. There is a good reason for his obscure position in the display, for "caganer" translates from Catalan to English as "pooper", and that is exactly what this little statue is doing — defecating.

Traditionally the figurine depicts a peasant in a red stocking cap, but in the modern era celebrities and politicians have been used, including Pope John Paul II and George W. Bush. This year's additions include Vladimir Putin and Gordon Brown, but the best seller is Barack Obama. (Image credit here)

The Army is currently on track to grow to 547,000 active-duty soldiers next year, up from 482,000 before the war. But Ford and other Army officials say that, with rising demand for ground troops for Afghanistan and other contingencies, the increase is insufficient...

The demand for soldiers extends beyond the war zones, as commanders in other regions request troops, Ford said. "It's a real challenge. It's not just Centcom that thinks they need more soldiers; Northcom wants more soldiers, Africom wants a dedicated headquarters, Pacom wants more for 8th Army in Korea...."

Someone can perhaps enlighten me as to why it is important for this country to maintain, much less increase, the number of our soldiers in Korea. I would note that it is certainly convenient for the Armed Forces that the U.S. is heading into a major recession with all that attendant rising unemployment. Just a coincidence, of course, but quite convenient.

The Giant's Causeway and other similar structures around the world are composed of basalt, which is extruded from volcanoes as fluid lava. It has been difficult to explain how lava would solidify into such regular hexagons. Physicists at the University of Toronto are now reporting that they have reproduced the phenomenon using water, corn starch, and a heat lamp. It appears to depend on the rate of cooling of the lava, and the principle may be extended to explain other regular geometric figures such as that found in polygonal permafrost. (p.s. - "hexagonality" is a neologism; I needed something short to fit in the title space)

Pliny the Elder reported that "elephants are scared by the smallest squeal of a pig" (book VIII ch. 9). Antipater's siege of Megara during the Wars of the Diadochi was reportedly broken when the Megarians poured oil on a herd of pigs, set them alight, and drove them towards the enemy's massed war elephants. The elephants bolted in terror from the flaming squealing pigs often killing great numbers of the army the elephant was part of… The Romans would later use the squeals of pigs to frighten Pyrrhus' elephants…

Genetically modified blue roses have reportedly been successfully created by the Japanese company Suntory; they inserted the gene for the blue plant pigment delphinidin into a strain of white roses. The ones in the photo at the top (from their website) appear to be more lavender than blue. Link found here.

As someone at Shorpy pointed out, the toys under the tree would be worth a fortune today (the Toonerville Trolley in the foreground goes for about $1500).

What interests me about this tree and the one in the next blog entry, apart from the decorations, is the "openness" of the branches. This is the way trees were when I was a child in the 1950s. Modern farmed trees are repeatedly mechanically pruned with I think a conical trimmer, and they become so dense with new growth that it becomes difficult to have ornaments dangle from the branches.

24 December 2008

A special treat for Christmas eve for the TYWKIWDBI family. The song will be familiar, the instrument not. This is a glass harmonica, invented by Benjamin Franklin. Sounds are produced by placing damp fingers on glass vessels in the same way that one might do at a dinner party; here the vessels continuously rotate, so the fingers can just be touched to the glass.

In Franklin's version, 37 bowls were mounted horizontally nested on an iron spindle. The whole spindle turned by means of a foot-operated treadle. The sound was produced by touching the rims of the bowls with moistened fingers. Rims were painted different colors according to the pitch of the note... With the Franklin design it is possible to play ten glasses simultaneously if desired, a technique that is very difficult if not impossible to execute using upright goblets. Franklin also advocated the use of a small amount of powdered chalk on the fingers which helped produce a clear tone in the same way rosin is applied to the bows of string instruments.

Before you listen to the music, please note this cautionary bit:

The instrument's popularity did not last far beyond the 18th century. Some claim this was due to strange rumors that using the instrument caused both musicians and their listeners to go mad... One example of fear from playing the glass harmonica was noted by a German musicologist Friedrich Rochlitz in Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung where it is stated that "the armonica excessively stimulates the nerves, plunges the player into a nagging depression and hence into a dark and melancholy mood that is apt method for slow self-annihilation.

And even though Faith walloped them 33-14, the Gainesville kids were so happy that after the game they gave head coach Mark Williams a sideline squirt-bottle shower like he'd just won state. Gotta be the first Gatorade bath in history for an 0-9 coach.

But then you saw the 12 uniformed officers escorting the 14 Gainesville players off the field and two and two started to make four. They lined the players up in groups of five—handcuffs ready in their back pockets—and marched them to the team bus. That's because Gainesville is a maximum-security correctional facility 75 miles north of Dallas. Every game it plays is on the road.

This all started when Faith's head coach, Kris Hogan, wanted to do something kind for the Gainesville team. Faith had never played Gainesville, but he already knew the score. After all, Faith was 7-2 going into the game, Gainesville 0-8 with 2 TDs all year. Faith has 70 kids, 11 coaches, the latest equipment and involved parents. Gainesville has a lot of kids with convictions for drugs, assault and robbery—many of whose families had disowned them—wearing seven-year-old shoulder pads and ancient helmets.

So Hogan had this idea. What if half of our fans—for one night only—cheered for the other team? He sent out an email asking the Faithful to do just that. "Here's the message I want you to send:" Hogan wrote. "You are just as valuable as any other person on planet Earth."

Read the rest of the story. It has a certain resonance for me, because when I was in junior high school we used to play basketball games against kids in a reform school. But I think most people (especially TYWKIWDBI regulars) should read the whole story. You might even be choked up by the end.

"Tai-wiki-widbee" is an eclectic mix of trivialities, ephemera, curiosities, and exotica with a smattering of current events, social commentary, science, history, English language and literature, videos, and humor. We try to be the cyberequivalent of a Victorian cabinet of curiosities.

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I'm using an old photo of my grandfather as an avatar; he would have been amused.
Old friends, classmates, students, former colleagues, or distant relatives are welcome to email me via retag4726 (at) mypacks.net